«The knowledge that allowed indigenous cultures to survive, the knowledge that we had once also been tribal and the understanding that we were but one mere culture of thousands. All of this disappeared in a few short generations. ... «It was explained in such a way that leads us to believe that the agricultural revolution was: °«Something that happened more or less by everybody. °«Something that happened more or less at the same time.
«The story is told so we think that one group of people figured it out and those nearby saw what they were doing and thought “aha what a better way of doing things, what a better way of living.” Once a group was enlightened with the knowledge of agriculture they immediately stopped their primitive hunting and gathering ways and settled down to practice the better way. They could see that this was man’s destiny and they eagerly took it up.»
Nonsense. I have never seen or heard any such description of the "Agricultural Revolution". If the writer assumes that this is implied by the word "revolution", that's their problem
------------------
«The agricultural revolution wasn’t about humans finding a better way to live. It was about a single culture out of thousands beginning to live in a way that only worked through exponential growth.»
Provably false. Agriculture and city life were developed independently in (at least) Eastern Asia, the Fertile Crescent, and Central America.Let's see...
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_revolution): An agricultural revolution or agrarian revolution is a period of transition from the pre-agricultural period characterized by a Paleolithic diet, into an agricultural period characterized by a diet of cultivated foods; or a further transition from a living a more advanced and more productive form of agriculture, resulting in further social changes. Examples of historical agricultural revolutions include: •The Neolithic Revolution (around 10,000 B.C.), the initial transition from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture in prehistory and developing the ability to farm crops. ... •The Arab Agricultural Revolution (8th–13th centuries), diffusion of many crops and farming techniques across Arab world and Muslim world during Islamic Golden Age. •The British Agricultural Revolution (1750–19th centuries), ... •The Scottish Agricultural Revolution (18th–19th centuries), ... •The Green Revolution (1943–late 1970s), ...
There was nothing natural or inevitable about the development of agriculture. Because cultivation of plants requires more labor than hunting and gathering, we can assume that Stone Age humans gave up their former ways of life reluctantly and slowly. In fact, peoples such as the Bushmen of Southwest Africa still follow them today. But between about 8000 and 3500 B.C., increasing numbers of humans shifted to dependence on cultivated crops and domesticated animals for their subsistence. By about 7000 B.C., their tools and skills had advanced sufficiently for cultivating peoples to support towns with over one thousand people, such as Jericho in the valley of the Jordan River and Catal Huyuk in present-day Turkey. By 3500 B.C., agricultural peoples in the Middle East could support sufficient numbers of non-cultivating specialists to give rise to the first civilizations. As this pattern spread to or developed independently in other centers across the globe, the character of most human lives and the history of the species as a whole were fundamentally transformed.
- - - - -
The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution - Middle School History (msh.councilforeconed.org › documents 978-1-56183-758-8-activity-lesson-03.pdf)
Between 10,000 and 3000 B.C.E., people in several areas around the earth developed new agricultural methods and machines, such as the plow pulled by horses or oxen. During this time, people also began the slow domestication and development of both crops and animals. The results of these changes made agricultural production much more productive. Food output increased. More land could be farmed by fewer people or in fewer hours. This resulted in greatly improved production and increased the availability of food.
I would say in response to that article: "Those other ten thousand cultures. Show me their Chartres. Show me their Beethoven, their Raphael. Show me their Chaucer, their Shakespeare, their Dickens. Show me their Copernicus, their Galileo, their Mendel, their Tesla. Show me their Plato, their Aquinas, their Bertrand Russell. Show me how they replicate the complex chain of invention, discovery, exploration and deep thought that resulted in this culture in which you can write this article and I may read it. Show me all that, in those other cultures, and I will agree that our civilisation was and is unnecessary. Or tell me that all that is wrong and evil, and I will know the precise value of your argument.
"If the price of having done the things we have done is to die as a species...if the price of continued life is to abandon all that we have learned, all that we have achieved, and be content with mere day-to-day existence...then the question is not settled. Your civilisation or your life? As the great Jack Benny said, I'm thinking it over."
Since we're going to die as a species anyway, probably within the next century, I'm glad we made our mark on time before we went. Whatever it took.
We have evidence of whole chains of inventions -- fire, pottery, cordmaking, knapping, etc. -- without which modern concepts of civilization would not have evolved. We have, too, examples of art and artifacts, some of them quite impressive. There have been rather sophisticated civilizations based on things other than farms. Much has been lost, which is one point of the article, but there's plenty enough in the archaeological record to tell that quite a lot was going on.
It's just that modern people think theirs is better and other people's are worthless because they aren't the same, which is the other point.
That doesn't answer my point. Yes, I do think a culture that produced Beethoven (and Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Corelli, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Berlioz, Rachmaninov, Sibelius and so on and so forth right up to Mike Oldfield and Hans Zimmer) is better than one which didn't and couldn't. Of course, as a product of said culture, it would be strange if I didn't. But I've seen pictures of the Benin bronzes, and I've seen pictures of the paintings of people from Giotto to Dali and beyond, and I've made my personal choice. Mr Quinn may think differently, as may you.
If one of those other ten thousand cultures could and did achieve that level of creativity, that complexity, that sophistication, then I'll happily admit that our civilisation is not the only meaningful way we could have developed. Without evidence...sorry, no.
To paraphrase, "Totalitarian Agriculture wasn't better, it just outperformed all other agriculture so dramatically that there was no way for the other forms to compete."
That... sounds like 'better'. 'Forced them to grow' means 'didn't have to watch their babies starve as often'.
"More competitive" is not the same as "better." See examples cancer cells and selfish genes. They replicate just great. They are tremendously effective at what they do. It's just that this is not equally great from all perspectives, such as if you prefer having a liver to a much bigger wad of cancer cells.
Other cultures, compared with the explosive growth of tyrannical agriculture, did much less damage to their environment and were much more stable. Not perfect, but good enough to get along a lot longer. Now look around. We've wiped out most of the forests, much of the other resources, a great many species, and lit the environment on fire. This is what happens when you have a philosophy of limitless growth in a limited system. Things break down.
We've grown faster and larger than we have the social skills to manage fluently. Europe thought the Euro was a dandy idea, they wanted the benefits of a unified currency, but they weren't willing and able to support that by actually unifying the economy so it would work. The result is a flaming disaster, just like a handful of more-astute economists predicted. Well, that was obviously going to happen. The same keeps happening with most of our efforts to become more organized: they're great ideas that run aground on humanity's very slow growth in ability to give a shit about other people. We're constantly trying to function beyond our skill level, and the results create a planet that is less and less inhabitable.
This does not fit my definition of "better." YMMV.
Only here, a better analogy is 'human being' vs. 'sea cucumber'. Civilization doesn't destroy everything around it and die -- it organizes into much larger, more complicated, interesting, and basically all around better forms.
I think Zander is at least somewhat off-base in his measure of the society. Yes, Western society has done all these things – music, literature, technology – but at what price? Native American societies survived for millennia; the Maya even have records of it… The Lorax taught us that biggering and biggering and biggering until the last trufula tree falls is a disaster of epic proportions.
Now, one of the things we have brought within our reach with all this biggering is the possibility of living on other worlds. But. We will still have to learn to live sustainably on those new worlds, which will no doubt be far more fragile with respect to humans then our native Earth. (See also Scalzi's _Zoe's Tale_, which has a group of Mennonites to teach us geeks how to survive without all our technology.)
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(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-28 11:08 pm (UTC)«The knowledge that allowed indigenous cultures to survive, the knowledge that we had once also been tribal and the understanding that we were but one mere culture of thousands. All of this disappeared in a few short generations.
...
«It was explained in such a way that leads us to believe that the agricultural revolution was:
°«Something that happened more or less by everybody.
°«Something that happened more or less at the same time.
«The story is told so we think that one group of people figured it out and those nearby saw what they were doing and thought “aha what a better way of doing things, what a better way of living.” Once a group was enlightened with the knowledge of agriculture they immediately stopped their primitive hunting and gathering ways and settled down to practice the better way. They could see that this was man’s destiny and they eagerly took it up.»
Nonsense. I have never seen or heard any such description of the "Agricultural Revolution". If the writer assumes that this is implied by the word "revolution", that's their problem
------------------
«The agricultural revolution wasn’t about humans finding a better way to live. It was about a single culture out of thousands beginning to live in a way that only worked through exponential growth.»
Provably false. Agriculture and city life were developed independently in (at least) Eastern Asia, the Fertile Crescent, and Central America.Let's see...
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_revolution):
An agricultural revolution or agrarian revolution is a period of transition from the pre-agricultural period characterized by a Paleolithic diet, into an agricultural period characterized by a diet of cultivated foods; or a further transition from a living a more advanced and more productive form of agriculture, resulting in further social changes. Examples of historical agricultural revolutions include:
•The Neolithic Revolution (around 10,000 B.C.), the initial transition from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture in prehistory and developing the ability to farm crops. ...
•The Arab Agricultural Revolution (8th–13th centuries), diffusion of many crops and farming techniques across Arab world and Muslim world during Islamic Golden Age.
•The British Agricultural Revolution (1750–19th centuries), ...
•The Scottish Agricultural Revolution (18th–19th centuries), ...
•The Green Revolution (1943–late 1970s), ...
- - - -
•Agriculture And The Origins Of Civilization: The Neolithic Revolution
(http://history-world.org/agriculture.htm)
Edited By: Robert Guisepi
There was nothing natural or inevitable about the development of agriculture. Because cultivation of plants requires more labor than hunting and gathering, we can assume that Stone Age humans gave up their former ways of life reluctantly and slowly. In fact, peoples such as the Bushmen of Southwest Africa still follow them today. But between about 8000 and 3500 B.C., increasing numbers of humans shifted to dependence on cultivated crops and domesticated animals for their subsistence. By about 7000 B.C., their tools and skills had advanced sufficiently for cultivating peoples to support towns with over one thousand people, such as Jericho in the valley of the Jordan River and Catal Huyuk in present-day Turkey. By 3500 B.C., agricultural peoples in the Middle East could support sufficient numbers of non-cultivating specialists to give rise to the first civilizations. As this pattern spread to or developed independently in other centers across the globe, the character of most human lives and the history of the species as a whole were fundamentally transformed.
- - - - -
The Neolithic Agricultural Revolution - Middle School History
(msh.councilforeconed.org › documents 978-1-56183-758-8-activity-lesson-03.pdf)
Between 10,000 and 3000 B.C.E., people in several areas around the earth developed new agricultural methods and machines, such as the plow pulled by horses or oxen. During this time, people also began the slow domestication and development of both crops and animals. The results of these changes made agricultural production much more productive. Food output increased. More land could be farmed by fewer people or in fewer hours. This resulted in greatly improved production and increased the availability of food.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-28 07:52 pm (UTC)"If the price of having done the things we have done is to die as a species...if the price of continued life is to abandon all that we have learned, all that we have achieved, and be content with mere day-to-day existence...then the question is not settled. Your civilisation or your life? As the great Jack Benny said, I'm thinking it over."
Since we're going to die as a species anyway, probably within the next century, I'm glad we made our mark on time before we went. Whatever it took.
Well...
Date: 2015-08-28 08:30 pm (UTC)It's just that modern people think theirs is better and other people's are worthless because they aren't the same, which is the other point.
Re: Well...
Date: 2015-08-28 09:22 pm (UTC)If one of those other ten thousand cultures could and did achieve that level of creativity, that complexity, that sophistication, then I'll happily admit that our civilisation is not the only meaningful way we could have developed. Without evidence...sorry, no.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-28 09:30 pm (UTC)That... sounds like 'better'. 'Forced them to grow' means 'didn't have to watch their babies starve as often'.
No...
Date: 2015-08-28 09:37 pm (UTC)Other cultures, compared with the explosive growth of tyrannical agriculture, did much less damage to their environment and were much more stable. Not perfect, but good enough to get along a lot longer. Now look around. We've wiped out most of the forests, much of the other resources, a great many species, and lit the environment on fire. This is what happens when you have a philosophy of limitless growth in a limited system. Things break down.
We've grown faster and larger than we have the social skills to manage fluently. Europe thought the Euro was a dandy idea, they wanted the benefits of a unified currency, but they weren't willing and able to support that by actually unifying the economy so it would work. The result is a flaming disaster, just like a handful of more-astute economists predicted. Well, that was obviously going to happen. The same keeps happening with most of our efforts to become more organized: they're great ideas that run aground on humanity's very slow growth in ability to give a shit about other people. We're constantly trying to function beyond our skill level, and the results create a planet that is less and less inhabitable.
This does not fit my definition of "better." YMMV.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-28 11:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-29 02:53 am (UTC)Now, one of the things we have brought within our reach with all this biggering is the possibility of living on other worlds. But. We will still have to learn to live sustainably on those new worlds, which will no doubt be far more fragile with respect to humans then our native Earth. (See also Scalzi's _Zoe's Tale_, which has a group of Mennonites to teach us geeks how to survive without all our technology.)